Obscurity, much?
that game is still obscure to the public.|link=http://tropes-fanon.wikia.com/wiki/Angelo_Rules]] A show you want to see on the internet today doesn't show up at all, or only shows up on streaming sites. Sometimes, the original owner might upload the whole series to YouTube. This can go either way- either they put it up for free, or they charge you a fee to watch an episode. The obscurity level also depends on how obscure it is: *Not obscure: See Pop culture. *Semi-obscure: The show is unknown to some viewers, but is a cult hit among others. *Fairly obscure: When the cult following is smaller than a semi-obscure show's. *Completely obscure: When nobody save the truest fans know what the show is. *Completely unknown: An even more extreme version of "Completely obscure". There are no "truest fans" for this version; the show is completely forgotten by everyone around the world. Because of the nature of this level, this level rarely qualifies for examples. Can be placed into "completely obscure" when someone talks about the show over the internet. Should this happen to a consumable product, it would overlap with Point of discontinuation. If the work is obscure in a particular country because it wasn't released there, but popular in the rest of the world, that's "Why Don't We Have That" under Cartoon Network Isn't Teletoon. If the obscurity is due to bankruptcy, it would overlap with real-life Financial Failure examples (Bionix Bankruptcy, if it's an anime company). If this happens to a language, that's Unreadable Language (or, in more extreme cases, non-fictional Jewelrunes). If something else causes the work in question to break out of obscurity and into the mainstream, that's The Colbert Effect. Not to be confused with Dubless Series- a show can be popular even without a dub, so long as it has official subtitles in the primary language of the country it's distributed to. If it's obscure in a certain country because it's illegal to watch it over there, that's Offer Void Wherever Prohibited. As far as film and animation goes, only full series (whether televised or released on the web) or full-length movies released after 1939 should qualify for this trope; an exception can be made if it's notable for being lost and obscure. There are too many short films, as well as films from the silent age and the 1930s to have them qualify for this trope. Networks/Examples with their own page *Cartoon Network *Teletoon *Other Corus networks/Nelvana *Anime and Manga **TV Tokyo **Weekly Shonen Jump ***Akira Toriyama *The Walt Disney Company *Music *Videogames **Pokémon (including print/anime examples) *Viacom *NBCUniversal *United States History *The Internet Examples *Ketchup: Cats Who Cook. In America. Long story short, North America only ever received a VHS release for the show. DVDs are just as rare, if any. **On top of that, it didn't even get its own Wikipedia page until 2012, and even then, it's rarely updated (case in point: there were no updates for the article at all in 2018). *Speaking of Australian cartoons, Pixel Pinkie is this in America, despite The Mysterious Mr. Enter reviewing an episode. *The Get-Along Gang. Its pilot aired on Nick and the series proper aired on CBS, but the series faded into obscurity after CBS cancelled it. *History rarely shows Mankind: The Story of All of Us. In fact, they don't air it at all, instead focusing on Pawn Stars and American Pickers. *Shirt Tales. It hasn't been seen since its last Boomerang airing in 2012. *Virtually all anime that hasn't been dubbed in English is this in the US. With very few exceptions, most anime without dubs (or with partial dubs) tend to be semi-obscure at best or completely obscure at worst. For specific examples, see here. *New Coke, to those born in the late 90s and onward, due to the backlash the drink got in the 1980s. **Not even Coca-Cola wants to talk about New Coke anymore and The Coca-Cola Company's CEO tries to forget about it. In other words, Coca-Cola's trying to make New Coke completely forgotten while hyping up Classic Coke (which was since renamed back to just "Coca-Cola"). However, some employees of Coca-Cola know about New Coke and the backlash it got. *The Sierra Mist formula was once thought up as this after Sierra Mist became Mist Twst. This lasted all but two years before this become subverted. *''Fanta Klare Zitrone'', the former German name for what is now known as Sprite, is obscure in its original form (aka the pre-Sprite formula). *If you live outside the southeastern United States, you might have not heard of Sun Drop at all, or just heard of it while visitng the southeastern US. *Turner South, unfortunately. Once it was shut down, the name faded into obscurity. Though part of the reason for the shutdown/conversion into Sport''South was thanks to Warner Bros. selling it to Fox, further being sold to Sinclair in 2019 due to Disney's acquisition of Fox. For more on said Disney-Fox deal, see here. *Some countries don't have their independence recognized by the United Nations. *Teen Titans: The Original Series, in contrast to its spin-off Teen Titans Go!. *CSI: Cyber, apparently. Not even the original CSI is that obscure. *Simsalagrimm is a cartoon that uses an animation style similar to The Raccoons. Unfortunately, it's all but obscure now. *Speaking of The Raccoons, it's also obscure, both in the United States and its native Canada. Teletoon Retro reran it because, and ''only because, Teletoon reran it in its early years. *Every single meme ever popularized started out in obscurity before they became popular (exceptions include any SpongeBob and Dragon Ball Z meme). *Sonic Underground prior to This TV rerunning it, believe it or not. Because of this, many people born after mid-1999 didn't even know Sonic had siblings until they watched their local This TV affiliate on Sunday mornings between 2010 and 2011. It has since reappeared on Disney XD as well. *The Madeline special Madeline in Tahiti can range from completely obscure to completely forgotten. Hence why everyone thinks My Fair Madeline is the last animated project for the franchise. *The first season of Johnny Test is semi-obscure, and those who know about it (usually) find the first season slightly better than the rest of the show, which is hated by most of the US. **In fact, until 2013, the entire first season save the episode "Johnny's House of Horrors" was completely obscure in Canada. *Spaced Out, Creepschool, and Dude, That's My Ghost!. The similarities? They were all co-produced by Alphanim or its successors (and all three have English dubs), and none of them have aired in the United States as of yet. *Part of the reason why people speculated that Slipknot would be among the first people to die in Suicide Squad (2016). The character was not as popular as Harley Quinn or Deadshot, and there were few scenes in the film that he appeared in. *''Donkey Kong Country's cartoon adaptation'' is semi-obscure at best in the States. The kicker is that reruns are not airing on Qubo yet (as opposed to Ned's Newt). *Any Christian children's series produced after the 1980s that isn't named VeggieTales is prone to be this. The only exception to this is the remake of Superbook. **The Mysterious Mr. Enter has, however, reviewed a failed pilot for a planned Christian children's series called Dorbeez (yes, there was a pilot literally called that). *Fleabag Monkeyface, and any gross-out show from the United Kingdom, for that matter, is prone to this. *Chloe doesn't have its own Wikipedia page. Even its author, Peter McCarty, only had two of his books (neither of them being about Chloe) getting a Wikipedia page, the author himself not getting one at all. *Angelo Rules has an in-universe example. Sherwood once says a word that started out as obscure, but became a fad after Tracy put it up online. And then Angelo sells the rights to the saying to a Japanese soda company, making it obscure (in what the cartoon portrays America) once again. **Another example is the page image, where being famous apparently gets one videogames before they're even out. Even if they're obscure prior to release. **The show itself is semi-obscure at best. *Considering TruTV being about, well, reality (well, it used to be CourtTV, a channel which was supposed to air only courtroom hearings, but that's another story entirely) its lowest-rated shows tend to be this. The most prominent example is The Principal's Office (yes, there was a show literally called that). The show only has some clips on YouTube which neither Turner Broadcasting nor Leftfield Pictures seem to be taking down. *The former VOD network Studio 4 Learning. Ironically, it ran a well-known PBS acquisition (The Zula Patrol). **It didn't help that its successor "Studybeat" failed to catch on and was shut down after a little while. Any gap left by Studio 4 Networks was filled in by Mag Rack (see the Mag Rack example for more). *Scripps-owned networks have had their fair share of obscure shows (for example, the majority of Food Network's programming outside of prime-time), given that anything educational or instructional that airs on one of these networks tend to be this. However, the Food Network has sent a couple of prime-time shows into obscurity. **"Health Inspectors", which lasted only one season and isn't even mentioned beyond the Food Network site anymore. **Kitchen Casino is an obscure clone of Chopped. It only ran 8 episodes and (partially) adopted the Money or Nothing tactic of Cutthroat Kitchen. **Food Network shows aside, there once was a network called "Fine Living Network"- which got introduced a little too late, given that the economy was in a recession during 2008 (said recession also made Lehman Brothers, mentioned above, bankrupt). In 2010, Scripps finally threw their hands up in the air and retooled the network into the "Cooking Channel"... but not without the last "program" shown by the network. Granted, though, the recession made some people lose their mansions due to foreclosure. ***Speaking of the Cooking Channel, it airs old Food Network shows, with the exclusion of the really obscure prime-time shows, no matter how obscure the shows are. ***Discovery now bought Scripps' networks (or at least several shares in them) and now (like they did on several other channels they owned in the past) are rerunning Scripps' stuff to death on Discovery's other channels. So it's technically now averted for the luckier shows. *The first release of Crystal Pepsi. Later releases of said drink were done just for a limited time. *Boomerang is meant to air these types of shows from Hanna-Barbera, but it eventually turned to Cartoon Cartoons and eventually modern obscure Cartoon Network shows. Not to mention Boomerang ran Gerald McBoing-Boing (2005), an obscure Teletoon program, for two years even after Tickle U ended. And considering that the network rebranded in 2015, dropping most Hanna-Barbera content save for the iconic content, it's likely Warner Bros. is trying to make people forget Hanna-Barbera even existed. *At the time J.G. Quintel's Close Enough was greenlit, a lot more people knew J.G. Quintel solely because he worked on Regular Show. This may change by the time TBS starts airing Close Enough. *"VideoNow", a former video-playing system released by Hasbro. Most of the shows featured for the system were from Nickelodeon (specifically, their Nicktoons); however, some non-Nickelodeon shows, such as Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! and a couple of series from 4Kids Entertainment were also released. While some of the shows released went on to become popular, the VideoNow format itself fell into obscurity. *WKRP in Cincinnati started off obscure before going into syndication, and is now considered one of the best television sitcoms of all time. **The series itself parodied this, too, since the plot involved a failing fictional radio station and its staff. Only in the series finale did the station become somewhat popular. **In The New WKRP in Cincinnati (which itself was obscure), the fictional station fell into obscurity once again. *Scooby-Doo rarely has this trope occur to one of their shows, but the biggest example was probably Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue!. Not helping was that Kids' WB was in their CW years, the end of the block was speculated for two years afterward, and the series was cancelled upon the transition to TheCW4Kids- and as such, it never aired reruns on Cartoon Network or Boomerang (at least on cable, Boomerang has the show on its subscription service as of 2019). *Block 13, outside the Arab World, is semi-obscure at best; however, the people outside the Arab World that did find out about it immediately dismissed it as a South Park rip-off. So now instead of being completely obscure, Block 13 is now infamous outside the Arab World for ripping off one of Comedy Central's longest-running television series. *Mag Rack has been around for quite a while, even managing to take over what was left by Studio 4 Learning/Studybeat after that company left VOD, but its (failed) rename Lifeskool was so obscure the VOD service was re-renamed to Mag Rack after 8 months being called "Lifeskool". **Not that its more-known name fared any better. Eebee's Adventures is among its most-obscure programming, and if a show is popular on Mag Rack, chances are it stars a celebrity (like John Lithgow starring in "Paloozaville"). *The merger of Kmart and Sears being without government influence, while big in the news at the time it was announced, was a sign of both company's troubles and obscurity in part of the US. The fact that they're still closing stores post-merger (and even after being saved from bankruptcy twice in the case of the former) is a sign that the company is beginning to go into obscurity, if not maintaining a loyal customer base. It's estimated that both chains would go under by the end of 2020. *Blockbuster, LLC filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, but soon closed all corporate-owned stores, leaving 51 locations, most of which have closed. Most talks about Blockbuster nowadays happens to be about its demise. *Toys "R" Us' bankruptcy averted this, thanks to being one of the largest bankruptcies in the world. You know it's big when Geoffrey himself appears on Jimmy Kimmel Live! for a sketch about the toy store's demise. It got to the point where ex-employees expressed their anger towards the company when "Geoffrey's Toy Box" was announced. *Outside of the German mark, which is now known for becoming extremely worthless post-World War I, all defunct currencies outside their countries of origin are this. *It took until 2011 for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic to debut on German airwaves, due to the obscure-outside-Europe Filly Funtasia toyline. Until the Filly license was yanked from Germany, next to no one was willing to license FiM for the German market due to how often girls' toys fail outside their home countries. This was also true for Filly, which wasn't first manufactured in Germany (Filly was invented in Denmark). **Thanks to the bronies, though, the fourth generation of My Little Pony currently averts this in Germany (and anywhere else where there's a significant brony fandom). *This could've happened to Sinbad Jr. and his Magic Belt had Trans-Artist Productions not been replaced by Hanna-Barbera as the animation studio for it during the pre-production phases.